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A potential championship baseball team should possess both a strong cleanup hitter and catcher to provide stability for the long season. One player left his mark on the 1984 Detroit Tigers by demonstrating to the blue-collar Detroit faithful that he had the strength and versatility to put on the so-called tools of ignorance and swing […]

Fred Downer led an interesting life, one that included being friendly with major league legend Ty Cobb. Downer was a star baseball player at a historically Black college who spent about seven years playing semipro ball in the segregated South and in the Midwest during the 1910s and 1920s. During his career, he was a […]

Paul Hines was a 19th-century all-around star who played in the big leagues from 1872 through 1891. He was a fine hitter, compiling a .302 lifetime mark with an impressive 2,133 hits in just 1,658 games. The latter two totals were third all-time at that point in big-league history, behind only Cap Anson and Jim […]

As a ballplayer, Judy Gans is a bit of an enigma. On the one hand, his official statistics paint him as a good, but not great, player. On the other, acknowledgment of his greatness by newspaper writers and his peers can be found scattered throughout the early pantheon of Black baseball history. Hall of Fame […]

Even though he managed to stay on the roster most of the 1902 season with the Brooklyn Superbas, his only season in the big leagues, Ed Wheeler had a miserable rookie year. The 5-foot-10, 160-pound switch-hitting utility infielder got into just 30 games, committed six errors in his first two, and barely managed to keep […]

E.P. “Cy” Twombly Jr. never took to sports. Despite owning a nickname that evoked major-league baseball’s all-time wins leader, and having a father who might have preferred him to become a left-handed pitcher, he became a (decidedly right-handed) artist of international renown.1 It was his father whose prowess on the mound had earned the moniker […]

Miller Huggins was the Hall of Fame manager who led the New York Yankees to their first six American League pennants and three world championships, in the 1920s. He forged unique relationships with both Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert and their star outfielder, Babe Ruth. One newspaperman wrote, “Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert saw in Huggins a […]

Some major league players are blessed with good fortune. Their talents are discovered early, they remain relatively healthy throughout their careers, and they always seem to be in the right place at the right time. Bob Ramazzotti was not one of those guys. His career began late, was interrupted by war, and was stifled by […]

Imagine you’re playing word association with a baseball nut. Mention Commerce, Oklahoma, and the fan will respond, “Mickey Mantle!” Shout out Donora, Pennsylvania, and the fan will bellow out, “Stan Musial.” And if your next term is Puerto Armuelles, the fan is likely to shout … “Say that again?” Small though it may be, Puerto […]

In the months leading up to his graduation from high school in 1968, Bill Greif, a 6’5″, 200-pound, multi-sport athlete, was in demand. He starred in track and field, started on the basketball team, led the football team to a state championship as the starting quarterback. As a pitcher he had been attracting baseball scouts […]

The US Soccer Hall of Fame credits Dick Spalding with scoring the first goal for America in an international soccer tournament, in 1916.1 Newspaper articles at the time indicated that it was John Heminsley, not Spalding.2 Regardless, Spalding was considered one of the best soccer players in America while at the same time honing baseball […]

Gary Sheffield was known for a swing so quick “he could turn on a .38-caliber bullet.”1 The menacing way he waggled his bat and the screaming line drives it produced caused a frustrated Cincinnati Reds coach to promise to ban his pitchers from throwing Sheffield a strike.2 Sheffield emerged as a star in 1992, when […]

Juan Pizarro was a talented, durable Puerto Rican pitcher. The lefty pitched in all or part of 18 major-league seasons, starting as a rookie with the 1957 Milwaukee Braves. The Braves rushed him to the big club after one eye-opening season in Class A, yet their very deep pitching staff limited Pizarro’s opportunities. He did […]

“Buck Ewing was simply terrific.” — George Lippe1 William “Buck” Ewing had the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time at least twice during his otherwise itinerant Negro League career. He found himself on the Chicago American Giants in 1920 at the outset of his career as Rube Foster’s franchise […]

With a competitive, sometimes combative, spirit and a devastating split-fingered fastball, Jack Morris became the pitcher of the 1980s and continued his dominance into the early 1990s. His 162 victories in the 1980s were 22 more than runner-up Dave Stieb of Toronto. Four times he was a member of a world-championship team, including a one-year […]

Former Red Sox pitcher Frank Sullivan wore uniform number 18 with distinction before later Sox pitchers Jason Johnson, Tomo Ohka, and Daisuke Matsuzaka were born. During his eight seasons with the team, Sullivan won 90 games and was named to two American League All-Star teams. As of the end of the 2009 season, his career […]

The “Iron Man” of the Texas League1 “A spitter jumping like a West Texas jackrabbit”2   Baseball history is quite familiar with Burleigh Grimes, the last legal spitball pitcher in the major leagues; and maybe Urban “Red” Faber, the final American Leaguer. But what about minor-league pitchers who were grandfathered in? Enter Paul Wachtel (WAH-tell), […]

Though Thomas Austin Brewer Jr. was a lifelong resident of Cheraw, South Carolina, he was born in North Carolina on September 3, 1931.1 Cheraw lies in the northern part of South Carolina and was a town of a few thousand inhabitants in 1931 so it happens that the nearest hospital was in Wadesboro, North Carolina, […]

Ken Griffey Jr. slides in with the winning run for the Seattle Mariners on Edgar Martinez’s 11th-inning double to beat the New York Yankees 6-5 in Game Five of the American League Division Series on October 8, 1995. The excitement of the Mariners’ first playoff appearance helped fuel a political effort to build a new […]

Baseball traveled through rough waters beginning in the late 1960s, as it navigated increasing player unrest and the growing power of their union. Court cases, strikes, hearings, lawsuits—it was challenging to follow baseball in this period without a law degree. The off-field headliners—Curt Flood, Bowie Kuhn, Marvin Miller, Andy Messersmith, Charlie Finley—are as famous as […]

The Minnesota Twins have called Target Field home since 2010. (COURTESY OF STEW THORNLEY)   The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have long been a baseball mecca. The Minneapolis Millers and St. Paul Saints were Triple-A mainstays, and each had a long and distinguished history, being the two teams with the most wins […]

Nearly a half-century after its publication, one does not encounter much negative criticism of Ball Four, Jim Bouton’s 1970 journal mainly recounting his previous season pitching in the major leagues. A best-seller at the time of its publication, the book fundamentally changed sports literature and journalism, and the way we view our sports heroes. In […]

For close to 70 years, the rich baseball history of Rochester, New York, centered around a lopsided ballpark at 500 Norton Street. The park known over the years as Red Wing Stadium and Silver Stadium hosted decades of minor-league baseball and a year of Negro National League play. Like all minor-league parks, its occupants were […]

Passon Field has been renamed Pollock Field and is still in use by West Philadelphia High School sports teams. (Courtesy of Lynn Alpert)   The first half of the twentieth century featured the proliferation of amateur and professional sports teams, including baseball, softball, football, basketball, soccer, and hockey. Baseball, Black and White, was far and […]